In my first pheromone experiment with these cute little teddy bears I asked the question “Will pheromones cause someone to pick one teddy bear over other non-pheromone teddy bears?” and the answer seemed to be “NO”. In this experiment I will ask the question…

Can Pheromones Make One Seem More Trust Worthy?

This experiment uses four blue teddy bears, all identical. They have all been sliced open in the back and have money which has been sprayed with cologne (one with pheromone cologne) inserted into them and they were then closed with Velcro — thanks to my wife for adding the Velcro!

The three bears without pheromones have $1 bills and the one with the pheromones has a $10 bill. Each pheromone teddy is placed on a stool and the stools are about 4 feet apart from each other. The pheromone teddy has the $10 bill which has been sprayed with “Instant Openness” and “Instant Honesty” from Androtics Direct (one spray of each). These two pheromone colognes were chosen because of their claims to promote “trust and honesty”.​The other bears have the $1 bills and each has two sprays of generic fragrance. The fragrances used are Polo, Chrome, and Blushing Cherry Blossom. Learn more at http://astrobiosociety.org

My Pheromone Experiment

I have four participants in this experiment. I wanted more, but four is all I could gather this time. Plus, if I had 10 and each one happened to pick the $10 bear I would be out $100!!

So, I tell the subjects of the experiment that they are to go into the den one-by-one and hug and smell each teddy bear. I use this story…

“There are four bears in the den… Each one claims to have $10 stuffed inside them, but only one is being honest. The other three are liars. I want you to go into the den and spend some time with each bear. Hug it, and smell it. Try and determine which bear is the honest bear. Go with your gut instinct. If you have to, give each bear a second sniff… Can you find the honest bear? If you can, the $10 bill he is holding is yours.”

The first subject was John, a 50 year old male. In my last pheromone experiment John was the only one to select a pheromone bear, so I was very interested to see if he would select the “honest teddy”.

John entered the den and I watched him hug and smell each bear. He selected one and I told him to open it up… $1 — he selected the Blushing Cherry Blossom bear.

I asked John why he picked that bear and he said it was because the smell stood out as different from the rest. He had a good point so I told him to just go with his instinct and not think about it and choose another bear… He selects another and pulls out another $1 bill. This was the Chrome bear. John was now up $2 and I had to reset the bears. Since John selected two bears, I am going to score this as 1.5 instead of just 1.

SCORE:

OTHERS 1.5, PHEROMONES 0

Next up was Maggie, a 26 year old female. An interesting thing about Maggie is that she has been boasting about her power of perception and her intuition. Would this help her find the pheromones — and the $10?

NOPE. Maggie also selected the Blushing Cherry Blossom. And, as with my last experiment, I start to notice a quick trend forming. So, I give Maggie the same offer I gave John — to pick a second bear… PHEROMONES! Maggie is now the happy owner of $11 of my hard-earned cash!

I asked Maggie why she chose that particular bear (the pheromone one) and she said it was her second choice after the Blushing Cherry Blossom bear. Ok, fair enough! I will score this as 1.5 again giving 1 point to the first selection and half a point to the second.

SCORE:

OTHERS 2.5, PHEROMONES 0.5​The next batter… Cathy. A 62 year old female who also participated in the first pheromone experiment. Cathy goes into the den and starts to hug and smell each bear. She then starts TALKING TO THEM — lol! It is actually very cute to see/hear her say “now, are you an honest little bear”.

She makes her selection… $1, it’s the polo teddy. Ironically it is the same one she picked in the first experiment (polo). So, since I have given everyone else a second chance I extended the same offer to Cathy… Another $1 - the Blushing Cherry Blossom strikes again.

SCORE:

OTHERS 4, PHEROMONES 0.5

The final subject is Telly. She is a friend of Maggie’s who I do not really know very well. I did not ask her age but I would say she is between 24 – 27 since she is Maggie’s friend and looks around the same age.​Telly enters the den… Blushing Cherry Blossom = $1. As with the last experiment, there is definitely a pattern. So, I ask her to choose again. SUCCESS! Just like her friend Maggie, she went from Cherry Blossom to Pheromones… And I am out $11 on her!

FINAL SCORE

OTHERS 5, PHEROMONES 1

Once again we have a situation where it seems the pheromones did not play much of a role. Blushing Cherry Blossom stood out because it was the only “feminine” fragrance of the bunch.

This can skew the results of course but, again, if the pheromones really had much of an effect I would hope they could have more effect. However, the pheromone cologne wearing bear was the second choice 50% of the time. So, I will not mark this experiment as a pheromone failure…Learn more about pheromones at http://youthbruce.com

I will mark this experiment as INCONCLUSIVE. 50% picked pheromones as first choice, but 50% did as second choice